Theatre Royal panto: Lesley Joseph

December 2014

SHE is fiddling with a gold crown, adjusting earrings and applying make-up during a lunch break that seems to be far from what you’d call a break.

“It’s all a bit manic at the moment,” admits Lesley Joseph, in her dressing room at the Theatre Royal where she and her fellow cast are running through dress rehearsals ahead of tomorrow’s opening night.

It follows two days of rehearsals in London, then two more at Nottingham’s College Street Studios.

“We’ve only just finished Birds,” she says, referring to the second series of ITV’s revived Birds of a Feather, which will begin on Boxing Day.

“We finished in the studio at Pinewood in London on Wednesday. We hadn’t overrun but I’d said yes to panto before Birds had been confirmed for another series.”

The return of the sitcom earlier this year after 15 years, starring the original cast of Pauline Quirke, Linda Robson and Joseph as Dorien Green, attracted millions of viewers.

“That series was very much about finding out whether it was going to work, were the public going to welcome it back... which they did – the ratings were fantastic.”

Eight million watched the opening episode.

“To go out on Boxing Day is such a huge compliment to the show, 25 years after it started.

“There is something in Dorien’s past that comes back to haunt her,” she says when asked for a few teasers from the new series, its 11th since 1989.

“Sharon turns out to be something you never imagined.”

A man?

“Nerrr, I dernt think serr,” she laughs, affecting a Lancashire accent. “And there’s a health scare with Tracey. It goes very much between drama and comedy which is what Birds has always done.”

It was the live stage version of Birds which last brought her to Nottingham (apart from the panto launch last summer) two years ago when it ran for a week at the Royal Concert Hall.

“I’ve done a lot of shows here so I’m used to the city really. I’ve been to that thing in the courts where there’s a judge,” says Joseph of the Galleries of Justice Museum.

“I don’t have a favourite restaurant here as such, but we had a meal in Marco Pierre White’s the other day and that was lovely. I have a favourite boutique that has some lovely eccentric clothes.

“It’s near the Lace Market – I love the Lace Market.”

Not that she expects to get much time to explore the city over the next six weeks playing The Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, opposite former Eastenders/Dancing On Ice star Sam Attwater as The Prince and Ben Nickless, who returns after last year’s panto with The Hoff, as Muddles.

“The dressing room becomes like a second home, really,” says Joseph. “You eat, breath and live panto. But that’s panto. I’ve been doing it for 25 years so you sort of get your head around it. It’s a strange old life.”

Does she miss anything or anyone?

“You don’t have the time to. I know that sounds silly.”

The next day off for her and the rest of the cast is Christmas Day.

“I’ll be at home in London.”

Will you be doing the cooking?

“I hope not.”

Get an M&S ready meal.

“Oh, I did that last year. It was brilliant.”

The next day, she won’t be watching the new series of Birds Of A Feather kick off because she’ll be on stage at the Theatre Royal for the second show of the day as the Wicked Queen.

She likes evil characters.

“They are quite hard work but whichever character I play, even if it’s not the evil one, I always manage to get a bit of evil or a hint of naughtiness in there.

“It’s always slightly Dorien-esque. I can’t play pure good.

“You wouldn’t cast me as a goody goody anyway. It’s boring for me.”

The production includes wire-free flying and pyrotechnics, so is she involved in any of that?

“I couldn’t possibly tell you that.”

That’s a yes.

“If I fly I fly, that’s all there is to it.”

After its run she’ll be going on holiday: “I’ve been working solidly. I love panto, don’t get me wrong. I’d do it all year if I could. I love the magic, the dancing... you get everything in one show. It’s fantastic but afterwards you are shattered.”

She adds: “Then we’ll see if we get more Birds.”


Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs runs until Sunday, January 11. Tickets start at £15 and are available fro the box office, call 0115 989 5555 or go to trch.co.uk.

Theatre Royal panto: Ben Nickless

November 2014

HE was a gent, a generous performer to work with but uniquely himself. That’s how Ben Nickless recalls his time with David Hasselhoff in pantomime at the Theatre Royal last year.
“We’d do our first scene together then sit in the wings,” says Nickless, who played Smee, opposite The Hoff’s Captain Hook.
“I’d be next to him waiting to go back on and he’d say: ‘Great scene, man. They loved us!’ But in the wings, the rule is, you don’t talk... or if you do, you whisper. But he must have learned to whisper in a helicopter, he was so loud.
“I’d always get in trouble because he’d talk to me, saying: “Man, that was awesome!” and one of the crew would come over and say ‘Can we keep the noise down!?’ He’d look around, saying: ‘Why, who’s being noisey?’ He had no idea the noise was coming from him,” laughs Nickless, who is from Lancashire but now lives in Torquay with his wife, a dancer.
“He’d always take his hook off in the wings because it was so sweaty. He was about to go back on without it, realised, searched around for it... and by this time he was supposed to be on stage. Then he’d find it, walk on and the light would catch his hat and pull his wig off. He was really flustered. The wardrobe lady had to follow him around, really on edge.”
Ben adds: “He was often off in his own Hoff world but he really was one of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with. A top man. We did have a good laugh.”
They stayed in touch and Hasselhoff gave Nickless a small role in his new spoof TV documentary called Hoff The Record.
“He said at the time we were in panto that he’d get me in the show but in the showbusiness world you take that with a pinch of salt. Then I got a call from the producer of the show and filmed it in London last month.
“Here’s a man who works all over the world and lives in LA but I end up filming with him in a kebab shop in London.”
The series will aired be on Dave in the spring.
Before that, the 33-year-old Ben will be back in the Theatre Royal panto, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, alongside Birds of A Feather’s Lesley Joseph and former EastEnder turned Dancing On Ice winner Sam Attwater.

“I’ve not worked with either before but I did see Lesley in pantomime years ago in Plymouth, because my mate was in it,” he says.
“She was really funny. My expectations weren’t massive for her but she was brilliant. And I’ll think she’ll bring a lot to Nottingham.”
This will be his eleventh panto and he’ll be playing Muddles, opposite Joseph as The Wicked Queen and Attwater as The Prince.
The return to Nottingham will mean a chance to see more of the city.
“The Hoff was telling me ‘you’ve got to go and see the Castle’ but I never got the chance. I’m a big football fan and I did go and see the Brian Clough statue. Hopefully, when I’m back there I can see a bit more of Nottingham and not just the dressing room, the stage and Wagamama’s.”
He adds: “I’m a sucker for a Wagamama’s. I also did TGI Friday, Subway, Bella Italia, Red Hot World Buffet, Harvester and the Moulin Rouge chippy where you could sit inside and have a fritter.
“Nottingham is a great place to do panto because of all the restaurants you’ve got. There’s never a problem finding somewhere to eat after a show.”
Nickless started out as a Bluecoat at Pontins, was a kids’ entertainer, did his first panto, then began a series of summer seasons.
“I’m a variety entertainer. I sing, I do comedy, I do impressions, there’s a few prop gags,” he says.
“I was never the class clown at school. I was quite shy. But I was in a school production of The Wizard of Oz and the drama teacher was shocked how naturally I took to it. The next year we did the Pied Piper and the teacher gave me impressions to do. I became the most famous kid in the school after that.”
He studied performing arts at college but left and got a tele-sales job.
“On the side I was writing comedy and working on impressions. Then I entered the TV show Search For A Star and I won. From that I was offered a summer season. At the same time the office where I was working offered me a pay rise and a company car. I opted for the summer season, even though it was minimum wage and ridiculous amount of hours. It’s because it was what I wanted to do. And I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs runs at the Theatre Royal from Saturday, December 6 to Sunday, January 11. Tickets start from £15, available from the box office, call 0115 989 5555 or online at trch.co.uk.

Blood Brothers

April 2013

 

WHEN Blood Brothers first opened in the West End, it was by no means an instant hit. Although the critics enjoyed it, neither their recommendations, nor an Olivier Award, could keep it running beyond a few months.

It was when Bill Kenwright and Bob Thomson picked it up in 1987 and reworked Willy Russell’s story of twins separated at birth, that it took its first step on the path to become one of the West End’s most successful musicals, running for 24 years.

“Bill Kenwright and Bob Thomson could see how it could be a success and they turned it into a global phenomenon, running on Broadway and touring everywhere,” says Sean Jones, who plays Mickey in the current tour that comes to the Theatre Royal next week.

“It’s a timeless story,” adds the 42-year-old of the musical’s enduring success, that has included four awards for best musical in London and seven Tony Award nominations on Broadway.

“There’s the idea of twins separated at birth who are two sides of the same coin; it’s nature versus nurture argument. And there are themes of class, fate and family.”

Set in Liverpool during the 70s, Blood Brothers is the story of Mrs Johnstone, a young mother, deserted by her husband and left to her own devices, with seven children to feed.

She takes a job as a housekeeper in order to make ends meet and falls pregnant with twins.

Out of desperation she agrees to let her employer raise one of them as their own. The twins’ different backgrounds take them to opposite ends of the social spectrum, one becoming a councillor and the other unemployed and in prison.

When they both fall in love with the same girl, it has tragic consequences.

Russell was said to be inspired by the 1844 novella The Corsican Brothers by Alexandre Dumas, whose greatest successes were The Count Of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

But the Liverpool playwright denied ever hearing of the story in an interview at the end of last year as it closed in the West End.

“I’d been going into schools for years saying that,” laughs Jones, who runs workshops for students on Blood Brothers which is on both the English and drama curricula.

“He said that the only inspiration for it was the nursery rhyme There Was An Old Lady Who Lived In A Shoe. And the scene where Mickey is losing his mind and running through the streets of Liverpool with a gun in his hand was inspired by the Jimi Hendrix song Hey Joe.”

He adds: “I like to think I’m as cool as Jimi Hendrix when I’m doing that on stage.”

Jones, from North Wales, has been in Blood Brothers on and off since 1999.

“It hasn’t changed since then, or even since Bill Kenwright first put it on the stage in 1989,” he says.

“And yet over the years I’ve had people saying ‘oh, it’s changed a lot, like all that stuff about depression and mental illness at the end’. That was always there! It’s at the core of the story.

“People have written letters to Bill Kenwright to complain about the ‘new’ swearing that’s gone into the show,” he laughs.

Russell first wrote Blood Brothers as a school play in 1982, before it opened at Liverpool Playhouse a year later with Barbara Dickson as its star.

It ran in the West End the same year but closed by November.

The Kenwright/Thomson production toured the UK in 1987 and transferred to the West End a year later, where it stayed for the next 24 years, becoming the third longest-running musical.

Worldwide cast members have included Russell Crowe in Australia and David Cassidy on Broadway.

“I think it’s a very masculine show,” says Jones. “There aren’t many musicals where you have guns. Men tend to be dragged along to see it under duress by their wives or girlfriends and they are the ones who usually clue into it.

“And its themes are as relevant as when it was written. I go into schools and say ‘imagine what it was like to leave school with no prospects and with real financial problems’. That’s how things are today. It’s no longer a period piece.”

Despite the economic climate, Blood Brothers is still a sell-out success where it goes.

“It always amazes me that people will part with their money time and again because it’s not cheap when you are taking the whole family.

“I suppose the advantage we have is that Blood Brothers is a familiar brand. People are prepared to part with their money when they know they are going to have a good time. They know the quality is there.”

He adds: “A lot of the younger ones in the company probably don’t realise how lucky they are.”

The cast also includes Maureen Nolan as Mrs Johnstone, Mickey’s mum, who has been played by Jones’ wife.

“There is this weird Oedipal moment where I’m hugging my wife who is playing my mum and I’m kissing another girl, who is a friend of the family,” he laughs. “At least she gets to dominate me even more than usual.”

They met doing Blood Brothers and she will be joining the show, as Mrs Lyons, later in the run.

“We tend to tour with our three-year-old-daughter and the dog so it’s the whole family circus on the road.”

Although he is no fan of musicals, he was attracted to Blood Brothers 20 years ago.

“Someone told me that there was a really good part for me in it. So I went along and fell in love with the part of Mickey. For years after I’d bore my friends going on about it. There is a video somewhere when I was a drama student at a drunken party acting out the final scenes from Blood Brothers.

“I recently found the original fax that I sent to Bill Kenwright just as I graduated asking to be in it. I never got an audition. It took me eight years before I was cast.”

Jones has also appeared on TV’s Hollyoaks, Men Behaving Badly and with Harry Hill. He’s been in Emmerdale three times, playing different characters.

“Most recently I played a paraplegic chair salesman,” he says. “I’m lucky because I live in Yorkshire and Emmerdale is on the doorstep. I’ve got quite a good relationship with the TV producers and casting directors there so when I’m on a break from Blood Brothers and they are casting for a small part, they give me some work.”

He has ambitions to work in film, and quite fancies a Shane Meadows project although he’s not quite mastered the Nottingham accent yet.

“As actors we always used to say that the hardest accent to do is Geordie but I think it’s East Midlands. It’s amazing and you spot it straight away but think ‘I can’t do that’. Paddy Considine can do it. And Steve Coogan’s in Saxondale wasn’t bad.”

He adds: “That’s my plan for the week. To master the Nottingham accent.”

Blood Brothers runs at the Theatre Royal from Tuesday to Saturday at 7.30pm, with matinees on Wednesday and Thursday at 2pm and Saturday at 2.30pm. Tickets are very limited and cost £16-£35. For availability call 0115 989 5555 or go to www.trch.co.uk.

Suggs

February 2013

SUGGS never knew his father growing up. The man who left home when he was a small child was rarely spoken of although he knew a few, shocking details. “I knew he was a heroin addict and I knew he ended up in an asylum,” says the Madness frontman. “My mum was a jazz singer and she came down from Manchester.
“My dad was a big jazz fan and a photographer. They met in Soho.
“When they married she didn’t realise he was a heroin addict... not until she came home from work to find him with a needle sticking out of his hand. Then life started to get difficult and he became impossible to live with.
“So they went their separate ways.”
Heroin was rife in the jazz clubs of Soho during the 50s.
“I remember a chemist in Shaftesbury Avenue and one day a week they’d give out free heroin to registered addicts. There’d be queues of people.”
Suggs, who was born Graham McPherson, only discovered more about his dad when he turned 50.
“After he left my mum lost touch with him and we never really talked about him. It was one of those very British things; the elephant in the room.
“But when I turned 50 I started feeling retrospective. The kids had left home and my cat died. So I asked my ‘what did happen to dad?’ She started to fill in a bit more about who he was so I thought I’d find out what happened to him.”
He figured it would mean months of research in the local archives and visits to his family in Scotland.
“But then someone suggested I look on Wikipedia. And half of it was right there!”
His research also uncovered some shocking details of why he ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
“There was a story that he’d injected himself with paraffin,” says the 52-year-old. “He’d started injecting himself with anything he could find. I think the authorities thought it was the safest place for him. But I don’t really know much more than that.”
Although his dad died in 1975 at 40, Suggs was still taken aback on finding his death certificate.
“It was like he’d just been a figment of my imagination until then.”
He adds: “It made me think twice about (using) heroin, I must admit.”
His dad’s story is the narrative thread in the show he brings to the Theatre Royal in May.
“The conclusion is that you can dwell on the past, especially when it’s something bad and you can keep dragging it around with you like a ball and chain or you can just get on with life now. The people around you now are the most important people.”
The show, called My Life Story, also includes tales of his upbringing, life with Madness at 18, his career in TV and radio, and his own family, which includes a wife of over 30 years and their two daughters.
“It’s not stand-up, it’s not An Audience With... and it’s not a monologue either. We ended up with a sort of tragi-comedy musical sad thing... which is uncategorisable,” he says.
“When I wrote it, it was about five hours long. But I’ve got a director who showed me how to condense it. And he showed me ways of theatrically jumping around in time. If you leap from side of the stage to the other and shout ‘It’s 1992’ and the lighting changes a bit, then people kind of believe you.
“The only problem was learning it. There was a bit on a train where I kept getting off in 1975 when I was supposed to be in 1992,” he laughs.
He has a guitar and piano accompaniment for a few songs during the show.
“They are songs that illustrate the story. Baggy Trousers explains quite a bit about my childhood.”
Most of the band have seen it, when he took it on the road last year.
“They’d shout out at certain points that I’d got the date wrong or that I’d made it up,” he laughs.
“But they were all very supportive.”

Suggs: My Life Story, Theatre Royal, Wednesday, May 8, £24.50, www.trch.co.uk

The Ladykillers

October 2012

IT is the story of the eccentric little old lady who lives alone with her parrot in a lopsided boarding house in King’s Cross. Enter new tenant Professor Marcus and his four friends, posing as a group of amateur musicians. In reality they are a criminal gang, planning a security van heist.

The 1955 Ealing comedy is considered a classic, so bringing it to the stage was a given, surely?

“When a theatrical agent called me about adapting it I was nervous,” admits producer Edward Snape.

“That it is recognised is terrific because people are automatically interested in seeing it but there is a risk of the expectations just being too high.

“What we’ve done is pay homage to the film but not simply produced a replica. Otherwise people may as well watch the film at home.”

He adds: “You have to come up with something special for the theatre.”

“The Ladykillers wasn’t simply a case of, let’s get a famous film, take the script and out it on the stage,” says director Sean Foley.

“We’ve developed a proper stage show from the roots of the film.”

The adaptation was written by Graham Linehan, best known for Father Ted and The I.T. Crowd.

“It’s very theatrical,” says Foley.

“There is a lot of physical comedy.”

We’re speaking at the Gielgud Theatre in London’s West End where TheLadykillers opened earlier this year.

The London cast included Peter Capaldi as Professor Marcus, Ben Miller as Louis and James Fleet as Major Courtney.

As well as breaking box office records at the Gielgud, it picked up five nominations for the 2012 Laurence Olivier Awards.

“There have been productions in the past but this is the first time The Ladykillershas been in the West End,” says Snape.

“I believe there was a Nottingham Playhouse production some years ago. But I didn’t see it. It’s always better to go in to a new production with a completely blank canvas anyway.”

It was actually Giles Croft, Nottingham Playhouse’s incoming director in 1999, who put the play on tour that year.

“There have been other adaptations but none on this scale,” says Kindred Rose, the son of William Rose, who wrote the original screenplay for the Ealing film.

“Those I’ve seen have been straight copies of the film. They were done quite well but they took the dialogue directly from the film and didn’t change it much at all.”

His father, an American who settled in Britain after the Second World War, came up with the story in a dream.

“I think he would have admired it,” says the 35-year-old, whose father died when he was 14.

“Thirty per cent of the film takes place away from the house so including the car chase in the play has been done really brilliantly.”

A car chase? On stage? I won’t give it away but it’s one of the production’s bigger laughs.

Says Foley: “It’s a good night out that everyone can come and see. There’s no swearing. I think the worst thing that anyone says is ‘blooming ’eck’.

“And there are some great production values and special effects.”

Foley is fresh from directing Kenneth Branagh and Rob Brydon in the French farce The Painkiller. He’s won awards in the West End for Play What I Wrote, Do You Come Here Often? and What The Butler Saw.

“We’ve done a lot of repeat business, a lot of word-of-mouth business and the response from critics has been very good as well,” he says.

The Express, Independent and Times all awarded it five stars.

Foley adds: “I always do comedy because I like it and I think it’s far more profound than tragedy.”

Shaun Williamson – you know, Barry from EastEnders – is watching as he is one of the stars of the touring production that comes to the Theatre Royal next week.

He’ll be joined by Clive Mantle (Robin Of Sherwood, Casualty, Holby City, Game Of Thrones), Michelle Dotrice (Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em) and Paul Bown (Holby City, My Family), plus Chris McCalphy and William Troughton.

Williamson plays One-Round.

“He’s a boxer who claims he had potential but thought he’d make more money by taking a dive,” he says.

“He’s at the heart of their downfall because he’s a teddy bear really. He is the one who says that the old lady is not going to be harmed. Then they all turn on each other.”

Williamson’s stage roles are usually in musicals.

“Apart from Porridge ,this is the first straight play I’ve done in a quite a while.”

He resisted watching the original film, which starred Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom, to prepare for the role. He also sidestepped the Coen Brothers’ 2004 remake with Tom Hanks.

“I wanted to go in fresh,” says Williamson, who played himself in two series of the Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant comedy, Extras.

“I’ve never played Nottingham,” he says.

“In fact, I’ve only been there once before and that was for a recording of The Price Is Right with Leslie Crowther. My local pub in Worthing had a trip up there in 1987.”

The adds with a laugh: “That’s a bit sad, isn’t it?”

The Ladykillers runs at the Theatre Royal from Monday, October 29, to Saturday, November 3. Performances at 7.30pm, with matinees on Wednesday at 2pm and Saturday at 2.30pm. Tickets are £12 to £29.50 from the box office, call 0115 989 5555 or go to www.trch.co.uk.

Russell Kane

January 2012

MY house is in Westcliffe-on-Sea, that’s my four-bedroomed dream home but I’ve been so busy with working in London that I had to rent it out.

It was just getting too tiring driving to and from the Essex coast each day, so I’ve taken a flat in North London.

It’s just me, the two cats Keith and Wayne and a new arrival - Captain Colin, the pug. I just like the traditional working class, 70s and 80s names.

And I must admit my new girlfriend does stay over very, very often but maybe we’re in that denial phase.

I would say my weekends are more Monday and Tuesday really. If I can get a rare Friday night off then there’s no question I’ll be down the pub to see some friends. Then ideally there’d be a bit of dancing and a curry. That’s my perfect night out - drink just a little bit too much, go a for a chicken tikka masala, then put a heavy science fiction movie on until four in the morning.

It’s not always science fiction. I can happily sit and watch Love Actually with my girlfriend. And I can turn on the man switch and watch Pale Rider, Carlito’s Way, Goodfellas or Goldfinger, which I got the other day and had an awesome afternoon watching that on blu-ray with surround sound.

At heart I’m a reader. Novels are my thing. At the moment I’m reading Philip Roth’s My Life As A Man. I recently read everything by Evelyn Waugh, then went on Mastermind with the specialist subject of Evelyn Waugh and won. So I love a bit of Brideshead Revisited.

I quite enjoy reading about social spheres that are the opposite of mine. So, Jewish New Jersey or ultra upper middle class 1930s London. It’s almost like science fiction because it’s another world.

I can’t be fussed to keep fit although I try to do a minimum 60 push-ups and 100 sit-ups a day. But it bores me. I can’t think of anything more boring than facing forward and running.

Music? If I’m about to go on stage or I’m trying to gee myself up I’ll go for Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys, Tinie Tempah, Example... stuff like that. But if I’m cooking then I might stick a bit of French pop on. If I’m really unwinding it’ll be Shubert or Beethoven.

I don’t go to gigs as much as I’d like to but I barely go to the shops to pick up potatoes as much as I’d like to either. I do love gigs. I was in Norway recently and I had a night off so I went to see The Wombats. I loved it.

But usually if I get a day off all I want to do is sit on the couch and stick Octopussy on.

I’ve done Nottingham loads of times: Just The Tonic; the Playhouse; The Maze; and one of the hardest theatre names to pronounce in England - the Djanogly Theatre (at Lakeside). It was named by Princess Margaret when she was (drunk).

This time I’ll be at the Theatre Royal with a new show called Manscaping. It’s based on the truth. I had a bit of a tough start to 2011. I split up with my missus and it was the first time I’d ever been single. I was like a kid in a sweet shop but I was atrocious at (sleeping) around. I was emotionally ill-equipped. It was really pathetic and seedy and I hit a low point. I cut my hair off, lost some weight... I lost my way a little bit.

I looked in the mirror one day and thought, write a show about that. It led off to analysing men and the different shapes we take along life’s path.

A perfect weekend? I think I had that last month. I met all the friends I grew up with on the Friday night, had something really light to eat and something not so light to drink and we ended up dancing like idiots. Then I went home with the girlfriend and watched a movie.

On the Saturday we went to Champneys (spa hotel in Piccadilly), where I’d never been to before. We put some white dressing gowns on and had massages, facials and Jacuzzis. On the Sunday we drove to a pub for lunch, came home, watched Dog Whisperer and fell asleep cuddling.

Russell Kane brings Manscaping to the Theatre Royal on Monday February 6. Tickets are £17.50 from the box office, call 0115 989 5555 or go to www.trch.co.uk

Journey's End/France

November 2011

IT is raining. Heavily. Again. But when you are stood in a cemetery where tens of thousands of young men were buried following World War I, it doesn’t seem fitting to start complaining. That the downpours have muddied the original trenches next to the cemetery at Notre Dame de Lorette, the French National Monument to those who died in WWI near the town of Artois, adds to the sense of empathy for the soldiers who were here nearly a century ago.

The trenches were preserved really by accident, the owner of the land not bothering to fill them in before letting his livestock graze here.

It’s still the case today. When visitors aren’t around the field is used by sheep. And there’s, shall we say, evidence scattered underfoot. There are original guns, shells, shelters, ladders and barbed wire scattered around but it’s far from a sophisticated or fitting memorial to those who fought and died here. There are no signs, no walkway and nature has filled in the trenches over time so they are shallower than they were by two feet. One has been dug out to recreate how it would have looked when Allied troops faced their German enemy less than 100 feet away.

The site helped Journey’s End director David Grindley with his production, to imagine what it was like for R.C. Sherrif, who wrote of his experiences of WWI in his play.

His experiences weren’t here but 80 miles south at St Quentin, in the days leading up to Operation Michael on March 21 1918, the last great German Offensive.

“It was their belief they could win the war if they could smash the British army before the Americans joined the war,” says Grindley.

“In some cases the British were outnumbered by eight to one and although they were pushed back up to 30 miles in some areas, they held the Germans. And this was incredibly important in terms of the outcome of the war.”

On that day more than 38,000 men died.

Sherrif created a fiction based on his experiences which tells of how a company of officers prepare for a daring raid across No Man’s Land to gather intelligence. Raleigh is just 18 when he joins a besieged company of soldiers in the British trenches. There he finds his new comrades being led by old school friend Stanhope but he is very much changed from the boy he knew.

It celebrates humour and courage in the face of certain tragedy. Many consider Sherrif’s work an important reminder of the horrors of war and the real, un-romanticised heroes who fought it.

Grindley’s production first opened in 2004 and has since picked up a Tony Award and been nominated for an Olivier Award.

After a run in the West End earlier this year, Journey’s End is now touring the UK and comes to the Theatre Royal next week.

“In 2003 myself and the production designer visited various sites mentioned in Sherrif’s story to get an idea of what the men went through,” he says.

“And I believe it had  a lot to do with the success of the production.”

He adds: “I think the reason Journey’s End remains such a resilient piece is that these men aren’t professional soldiers. They are ordinary men who were encouraged by Kitchener to sign up at their local town hall to assist with the war effort.

“Sherrif was actually an insurance agent from Surrey, who saw frontline action for ten months in 1916 until he was injured and returned to the UK.”

He wrote the play a decade later.

“Sherrif suffered from survivor’s guilt. He felt that he didn’t deserve to be alive and felt the need to commemorate those he knew who had died.”

Journey’s End was first staged in 1928 with a young  Laurence Olivier.

“It became a sensation around the world,” says Grindley.

Two years after its run in the West End a film adaptation was released, starring Colin Clive, David Manners and Ian Maclaren. A German remake, Die andere Seite (The Other Side) came out a year later. And the 1976 British film, Aces High, starring Malcolm McDowell, Christopher Plummer and Simon Ward, was based on the play.

“It’s probably fortunate that it’s raining so heavily,” says Grindley, as he walks us in to one of the trenches at Notre Dame de Lorette.

“You can get an impression of the sort of conditions these soldiers were enduring. They’d be wading through water now. And trench foot was a major concern because their feet would be literally rotting in this water. They’d be in wool uniforms that, when they became damp, would be a breeding ground for lice. And the dug-outs would be overrun with rats.

“Although it’s very green now, it would have been just mud. There would have been no colour. Sherrif talked of ‘mud churned up like the sea’. And there would be no birds, just a very eerie silence punctuated by moments of extreme violence.”

We also see the Vimy Ridge Memorial, Canada's largest overseas war memorial which maintains original tunnels, craters and unexploded munitions - many areas are cordoned off for obvious reasons.

The trenches here are less authentic, having been dug out and lined with white stone to make it easier for visitors to walk around.

And the site of Loos Battlefield, where one of the major British offensives was mounted on the Western Front in 1915. The Loos Memorial commemorates over 20,000 men who fell in the battle and have no known grave.

“What I wanted to emphasise with my production of Journey’s End was that these soldiers served on the front line for just six days at a time. This really surprised me when I first started working on it.

“It was only six days but they would have been the scariest six days of their lives.

“A lot of that time would have been quiet with little or no fighting. But there was an unbearable tension that at any moment something could happen.

“To deal with it, each of the characters in the play has a very active displacement activity, in order to take their minds off their situation. Trotter reads. Stanhope drinks and works. Osborne is the father figure and listens to the problems of the others. Mason the cook is trying to do 101 things with bully beef.

“Hibbert is the only one who really can’t disguise his fear and is consumed by it.”

He adds: “I think the ongoing success of the play is that the audience knows that these were just ordinary men and there’s a real sense of ‘what if it had been me? How would I have behaved?’”

Journey’s End runs at the Theatre Royal from Tuesday to Saturday. Performances at 7.30pm, with matinees on Wednesday at 2pm and Saturday at 2.30pm. Tickets are £12-£26 from the venue box office, call 0115 989 5555 or go to www.trch.co.uk

Marcus Brigstocke

June 2010

My weekend:

My idea of a perfect weekend is spending time with the wife and kids, good food and friends. Oh and a trip to the theatre to play King Arthur in Spamalot.

We opened last weekend. Very exciting.

We get Sundays off so I tend to spend that relaxing at home.

I often work at weekends anyway.

It will usually start on a Saturday morning with muesli, Radio 4 and one of the 800 supplements in the Saturday Telegraph.

As a family we’ve been to Longleat, which was fun. There is a camp site right inside the park and not too many gift shops selling rubbish. So I can recommend that.

In terms of viewing habits, I don’t really find time to get to the cinema all that much. The last film I saw on the big screen was A Single Man, which I hated. I'm looking forward to seeing Four Lions.

The DVD box set which has impressed me most lately is The West Wing. That really is exceptional.

I read mainly non-fiction but having young children I do enjoy reading things with them. Lately that has been Superfreakonomics and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I eat out a lot with the job I do but close to home, my favourite restaurant has to be Roka in Charlotte Street, London. That said I like any restaurant that can serve up good seafood.

If I have a takeaway at home I’ll more often than not go for a curry from my local the Holy Cow.

Do you keep fit? Well I do have a gym membership and I do have a personal trainer but I don't remember what he looks like. That tells you all you need to know about my philosophy on keeping fit.

As I said before, my radio preference is Radio 4 but on a Saturday morning I will tune in to listen to Jonathan Ross on radio 2.

I do play music at home. I have a huge selection and it can be quite an eclectic mix of genres. Having said that, more often than not you’ll be able to hear Pink Floyd and the Cure.

I work in the evening a lot so, as with any performer, I’m not able to see a lot of gigs, theatre and comedy shows but I did make time to see Flight of the Conchords last month and that was excellent.

Spamalot runs at the Theatre Royal from Monday June 7 to Saturday June 12. Tickets range from £14 to £35 and are available from the box office on 0115 989 5555 or online atwww.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk.

Robert Bathurst

February 2010

Many years ago Robert Bathurst was walking across Trent Bridge when something rather odd happened.
“It was after dark and this guy took my arm,” he says.
“He had a Trent Buses tie and a Robin Hood hat on.
“When he took my arm I realised he was mine for the evening, if you know what I mean.”
Bathurst was in Nottingham with a production at Nottingham Playhouse.
“I had digs on the Trent and one evening I saw there was a match on at the City Ground.”
So there he was, casually strolling over Trent Bridge to watch Forest play Everton.
“The only ticket I could get for him was at the Everton end. And there we were, sat in the Everton, with this guy in a Robin Hood hat. I had to sort of sit on him and say ‘look we’re supporting Everton, do you understand?’ But he didn’t quite get on board. So when Collymore scored he was the only one at the Everton end stood up and screaming, with me trying to pull him down.
“Fortunately no-one around us seemed to mind, they were cool about it.
“Then after the game we were stood at a bus stop and he said he needed to get to Mansfield. Someone there said they were going that way so it was like passing the baton and off he went.”
Bathurst, who played the cheating husband David opposite Hermione Norris in Cold Feet, has also been to Meadow Lane and seen Test cricket at Trent Bridge during his stays in the city, each time with a production at the Playhouse: The Importance Of Being Earnest, The Nose and The Comedy Of Errors.
This time it’s Noel Coward’s Present Laughter at the Theatre Royal.
“It’s one of his classic comedies. The play is 70 years old but it still stands up brilliantly. It’s rather a good take on celebrity loneliness and isolation.
“It’s about a tirelessly egocentric actor in his flat. He has his close confidantes, his ex-wife, his secretary and the people who raise money for his shows. They’re the only people he really communicates with. He basks on the love of strangers but whenever they come anywhere near him and declare their love, he runs in the other direction.
“Which is very contemporary as a theme, because you see a lot people like that who find ordinary people frightening.”
Are you like that in any way?
“I fear not,” he laughs.
That said Bathurst, who also appeared in TV drama Hornblower, doesn’t enjoy the celebrity culture.
His peak of mainstream popularity came with the nineties ITV comedy drama Cold Feet.
“It was huge and oddly enough still remains so,” he says.
“I’m astounded how people still talk about it.”
He adds: “I don’t play the celebrity game. I’m not holding myself out to dry like that. I think if you let newspapers in to your home, that’s where madness lies.
“I have a perfectly normal private life that remains private.”
Here’s what we do know...
Bathurst was born in West Africa, lived in Ireland as a boy and attended a convent then a boarding school, then aged nine a monastery school in England.
While at Cambridge he became president of the Footlights and toured Australia.
Theatre roles followed, during which time he married painter Victoria Threlfall (they have three children), then made a leap to TV in Malcolm Bradbury’s Anything More Would Be Greedy.
Since then he’s juggled television and theatre, most significantly in Steven Moffat’s Joking Apart then in 1997, Cold Feet.
Other TV work has included the sitcom Get Well Soon, Goodbye Mr Steadman, White Teeth, My Dad’s The Prime Minister and the BBC’s Emma.
Does he prefer theatre to television?
“There’s a cold commercial reality that you have to be on television in order to get good parts on stage but I do enjoy both. I always try and mix it up.”
His first experience of Noel Coward was in his twenties watching Blythe Spirit, Hayfever and Privates Lives.
“But I’d never seen Present Laughter - luckily. There’s a perception that you should do it like Noel Coward spoke it, which I think is really wrong.”
He adds: “Performing him has made me appreciate him more. It is beautiful stuff. Every word is really thought through. And it’s brilliantly funny.”
Bathurst, 53, plays self-obsessed actor Gary Essendine, with director Belinda Lang as his long-suffering secretary Monica, Serena Evans as estranged wife Liz and Virginia Stride as housekeeper Miss Erikson.
“He’s man who likes to be in complete control of events and everyone around him but by the second half, events completely spiral out of his control. So what we see is a very pompous man brought low.”

Present Laughter is at the Theatre Royal, from Monday to Saturday, 7:30pm (Wed mat 2pm/Sat mat 2.30pm), £11-£25, 0115 989 5555.

Behind The Scenes At The Panto

December 2008


AS he lets rip an almighty bottom burp he turns to me, out of sight of the audience and winks.
Brian Conley is clearly enjoying himself.
I'm in the wings, watching my first panto here in 35 years. There are signed pictures of Leslie Crowther, John Inman and Mike & Bernie Winters somewhere in the attic but I've no recollection of which pantos they were in.
Whatever they were, I reckon they weren't as ferociously paced and near the knuckle as Cinderella.
And I don't just mean the synthesised flatulence.
There's a lot of adult humour going on.
On stage Conley is hidden inside a tree spying on Cinderella. She's being wooed by a hopeful chap in tights with a basket of fruit.
Every time Conley let's rip, the audience are in uproar.
You enjoying it? I ask as he exits from the scene.
"There are lots of really little kids out there," he says by way of an answer. He means they're not getting the adult-only gags. Of which there are plenty. They go down better at evening performances when there are more grown-ups in.
Today it's nippers and they're a noisy bunch. When the five-minute call to performers alerting them to the impending curtain riser is piped through backstage, there's quite a din coming from the auditorium.
"In the evenings it's about bringing it out of them. In the matinees it's about keeping control of them," says Conley.
"Yesterday was classic at the matinee," says Michelle Potter who plays Cinderella.
"The reactions were in completely different places to what we're used to in the evening. They were screaming 'it's behind you' at points when we don't expect it. And we had to ignore them, which was awful."
We're in Conley's dressing room before the show, which isn't particularly lavish. He has photos of his wife, two children and dog, there's an Elvis mug – a gift from The Ugly Sisters ("the Uglies" as he calls them) – and three bottles of water.
His sofa is covered in samples of artwork for The Music Man, a musical he'll be taking to West End in April.
There's certainly no champagne.
"I don't drink any more," he says.
"I packed that in about five years ago. The show used to get in the way of my socialising. And that's one of the best things I've ever done."
His biggest backstage demand these days is Halls cough sweets.
"I have one under my tongue all the first half. All the time when I'm singing and talking, there's one under my tongue."
It's a trick he picked up from Cliff Richard to keep his throat fresh.
"I remember when I was in Chitty (Chitty Bang Bang, the West End musical) and one day I accidentally spat it out and I hit the actress right in the eye."
Sensitive to the risks of getting ill, he also has an army of vitamins, .
"I wash my hands as soon as we finish and disinfect the mike because if you get a bad flu there's no understudy. You still have to do it."
Has he ever had to cancel a show in the past because of illness?
"No, touch wood," he says, grabbing the dressing table.
A 30-minute warning call goes out for the 1.30pm matinee. Conley has been in the theatre for half an hour. He has no morning routine apart from sleeping as late as he can to make sure he's full of energy for the two (sometimes three) shows each day.
"We have a huge energy. You'll notice that when you see the show. And it's not just the performers – there's a whole show going on behind the scenes. But it's a well-oiled machine and very relaxed. You'll notice that."
I do. There's a lot of laughter in the wings. And very little silence.
"We're like a little family," says Conley.
For two months they are work colleagues and friends.
Cinderella opened last Friday and since then they've been across to the Stage Door pub, and had an Italian and Chinese meal together.
Conley says: "My wife and the kids come up at the weekends and my daughters are part of the show when they come up. They love being on stage."
He has a six-year-old and an 11-year-old.
It's not his first panto in Nottingham. That was 25 years ago in Dick Whittington with Little & Large and Bernie Clifton.
"I love it here," he says.
"The backstage has quite a modern feel about it but on stage it's that beautiful, historic theatre that's got the little ashtrays, the Royal Box and all that."
And it probably won't be his last visit. Apart from West End musicals, he'll always say yes to a panto role. Because of the freedom it brings.
"You never know what they're going to shout out.
"At the end we get four kids up and I talk to them... you never know what they're going to say or do. But that keeps it fresh."
No one performance is the same. He'll add in new gags from current affairs: Selina Scott, Gordon Ramsay, I'm A Celebrity...
"As long as it's not too deep we can get away with it."
It's the his third panto with Potter, a stunning blonde who has made appearances on Doctors, Footballers' Wives and Wire In The Blood.
"I'm used to Brian," she laughs.
"I cut bits and don't tell her," he chips in as he applies more make-up.
"Yes, he did that yesterday. And he changes the dance routine to do what he wants and I have to follow him."
So there's room for playing tricks?
"Oh yeah. It's panto," she laughs.
"The sisters kick me sometimes when they're not supposed to."
I find them ten minutes before curtain up in an area behind the stage cordoned off for wardrobe.
Nigel Ellacott and Peter Robbins have been doing this for 28 years.
We head to their dressing room for final preparations, passing dancers in dressing gowns limbering up.
Sets from later scenes stand idle: pink steps, Cinderella's carriage, a giant ham, a pumpkin and... a rather sinister looking human leg. In the dressing room I assure them that it'll be a quick one as time is short.
"Oh, I say," says Robbins, always in character.
The pair have their own website dedicated to panto – www.its-behind-you.com – on which they'll be doing a daily diary about Cinderella.
"So you can read all about the backstage goings on."
I raise an eyebrow.
"Panto land is a happy land," continues Robbins.
"It's a happy land," confirms Ellacott.
"So no gossip whatsoever."
Ellacott's first introduction to panto was backstage.
"My brother ran a theatre so I'd watch them rehearsing.
"The dame was always an elderly gentleman with big false teeth, bald usually, wearing a cap and they used to have a carrier bag that clanked."
Robbins, the larger of the two when in costume (he's Susannah to Ellacott's Trinny), adds: "And my mum used to take me in the pram to see Nigel doing pantomime."
They're off...
"No, no, no, surely she took you to the old Hippodrome before it got bombed..."
I leave them to their bickering and head to my position in the wings to watch the performance. And while the gags about snogging, blindfolds, Senior Willie and the Notts County bra go above the heads of the noisy tots in the audience I find myself chuckling away.
Mike & Bernie Winters were never this much fun.

Until Sunday January 18. For performance times and ticket details call 0115 989 5555 or go to www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk

On set: Magicians

September 2006


WE’RE just in time to see some poor soul thing getting their head lopped off at the guillotine.

Magician Harry Kane, aka The Black Widower, played by Peep Show’s David Mitchell, laughs like a panto villain, smirks at the audience and drops his balls.

“Damn, sorry everyone,” he says, retrieving them from the floor.

A ginger fella runs on to reset the Balls Of Death in Mitchell’s right hand for another take. He’s the film’s magic consultant who has recently been in London working on the big-budget Houdini movie starring Catherine Zeta-Jones.

As well as appearing in Magicians he is teaching Mitchell and co-star Robert Webb a trick or two.

“The magic tricks are shot in real time,” says producer Ollie Madden.

“We didn’t want to edit them as audiences would feel short-changed. They’re done as authentically as possible.”

“I’ve learned a few magic tricks which one day, if I’m a father, may come in handy,” says Webb, drawing on a Marlbro during a short break.

“Or down the pub.”

Both he and Mitchell and the rest of the crew have had to sign a confidentiality agreement not to reveal the tricks of the magic trade.

Like Mitchell, Webb is a graduate of the Cambridge Footlights.

The pair recorded an acclaimed Radio 4 sketch show, That Mitchell and Webb Sound, before their big break on Channel 4’s Peep Show. Their new BBC sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look starts next week.

“It’s been great — we’re really enjoying it,” says Webb.

“From an actor’s point of view there are a lot fewer lines to learn than for TV.”

So far the duo have seen little of Nottingham e but, as Webb grew up in Lincolnshire, he’s familiar with the city.

“I came on a few school trips and saw a couple of plays here. It was Shakespeare. So I’ve fallen asleep all over this theatre.”

As a Lincs lad he’ll know Skeggy — which is where the crew is off next — as well, then?

“Well, we were slightly snobsier than that,” says Webb. “We preferred Chapel-St-Leonard’s.

“Every time I had a new girlfriend I made the mistake of taking her on a day trip to Skegness. Usually the relationship recovered after a few months.”

I suggest they may like to take the notorious Nottingham-Skeggy train. No first class, screaming kids, nappies...

“No, David and I get ferried around in a diamond-covered helicopter.”

Aside from the two leads, Jessica Stevenson (Shaun Of The Dead, Spaced, The Royle Family) is on and off the Theatre Royal stage, where the Magicians crew have been filming since Sunday.

It is the tale of a successful magic double act who fall out after Harry catches Karl (Robert Webb) inflagrante with his wife, who is also his assistant. During the grand finale of their act, with his cheating wife’s head in the guillotine, Harry chops it off.

Though we’re not sure if it is intentional.

The incident seals the end of their relationship and career.

Wind on four years later and Harry is working in a supermarket while Karl has turned to a Derren Brown-style act of mind-reading called The Mind Monger.

When their paths cross they team up for a magic competition in Jersey with a big cash prize but soon fall out and compete against each other.

Filming began on Sunday with 700 local people drafted in as extras to pretend to be a magic show audience. For more than five hours they pulled suitable faces for the cameras to be cut in to the movie.

To keep them entertained, cast members told a few gags and answered questions from the audience. Some were more pleasant than others.

“Have you slept with Simon Pegg?” asked one extra of Jessica Stevenson about her Spaced co-star. No strops. Just a smile.

Backstage the director and team sit monitoring the shoot. As we’re introduced I recognise the director. It’s Andrew O’Connor. The former game show host.

As it turns out this is his post on-camera career. Magicians may be his first feature but his production company Objective created both Peep Show and Derren Brown’s TV shows.

“This is comedy and magic which is his two areas of expertise,” says Madden, from Intermedia UK. Universal Pictures will be distributing the film worldwide.

“Universal were behind Shaun Of The Dead. Peep Show has a very similar following to that of Spaced and Jessica Stevenson co-wrote Spaced, of course. So there is a similar profile.

“We have a funny script and there’s a great buzz about the movie. If we could be as successful as Shaun Of The Dead we’d be thrilled.”

Magicians is due out in the spring.